


Something New Everyday

by Lovers_Reason



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Drinking Games, F/M, First Time, Never Have I Ever, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2012-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-10 18:24:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lovers_Reason/pseuds/Lovers_Reason
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Um. Okay… Never have I ever… had sex.”</p>
<p>Everyone laughed and started talking over each other, but Clint was barely even aware of that, because something far more interesting had just happened.</p>
<p>Despite picking up her glass and bringing it to her lips like everyone else in the room, Natasha hadn’t drunk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Titled You're It on FF.net. 
> 
> And credit goes to gisela.tinuelena on FF.net for the drinking game idea.

The game had been Tony’s idea, of course. He had about a thousand dollars’ worth of expensive liquor, and after the day they had all had, getting drunk seemed like a great plan. Well, except that Steve and Thor couldn’t, of course, and Bruce never had more than one drink in a night. But still, going through the motions was worth something.

When Tony had suggested Never Have I Ever, Clint had agreed enthusiastically (as had Thor, after the game was explained to him) so the rest had just shrugged and went along with it.

“Never have I ever… been a soldier in an army.”

“No!” Tony shouted as Steve, Thor, and Clint each drank, “That’s no fun. You have to talk about dirty stuff! Come on, Cap. I’m sure there’s plenty of juicy stuff you’ve never done, you sanctimonious—“ Natasha smacked him on the back of the head.

They had been playing for nearly an hour and Tony was sloshed (partially because there wasn’t much he hadn’t done, partially because he downed half his glass every time). Clint had a pleasant buzz, enough that he didn’t find Tony irritating and could be amused by Steve’s discomfort.

“Um. Okay… Never have I ever… had sex.”

Everyone laughed and started talking over each other (‘Come on, Cap, handsome chap like you?’ ‘I’m sure Stark wouldn’t mind helping you out there.’) but Clint was barely even aware of that, because something far more interesting had just happened.

Despite picking up her glass and bringing it to her lips like everyone else in the room, Natasha _hadn’t drunk_. She was watching the men around her steadily, and when she realized Clint had noticed, she locked a hard gaze at him. Threatening him to speak up. He didn’t, of course, he wasn’t suicidal, but he definitely had something to ponder when they all finally said goodnight.

~*~

When he thought about it, really, it made sense. A strange, worldview-shattering kind of sense, but sense nonetheless.

Natasha Romanov trusted _no one_. Until he had met her, Clint had considered himself very guarded—a stoic, war-hardened loner. And maybe he still was, by almost any human standards, but Natasha made him look like a fucking care bear. “Abusive” might have described his youth, but it was hilariously inadequate when it came to hers. And even after that was over, she had lived most of her life among the true scum of the earth. It wasn’t surprising that she hadn’t met a man she felt comfortable allowing to touch her.

But still.

Everyone knew why Steve was a virgin; he had all these sentimental hang-ups from a by-gone era. That wasn’t Natasha. Natasha didn’t do sentiment. And Clint had seen too many powerful, handsome men salivate over her to understand why she had never used even one of them to take care of her needs. Honestly, he had sort of suspected she had fucked Tony, just from the way they interacted.

Clint just couldn’t see what was stopping her. And his curiosity was going to get the better of him sooner or later.

For the sake of his own skin, he waited until they were alone.

~*~

Clint woke early the next morning for his daily training session with Natasha. They had settled into a routine at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, and moving into Stark Tower hadn’t so much as dented it. Every morning at the crack of dawn they met for a warm-up and a long sparring session, and then they went to the shooting range.

He had a set of arrows with rubber tips that stung like a bitch but didn’t do any real harm, and it was a competition—a hit was a point in his favor, a miss was a point in hers. They had established early on that if his goal was only to hit her, he was going to win every time. But when he started trying for pinpoint targets like her knees or palms and it became a matter of predicting her movements, they became far more evenly matched and the exercise was fun for both of them, allowing both to work on their strengths.

It was quite a show, and they frequently drew an audience, but that morning, thankfully, it looked like everyone was busy sleeping off hangovers. When he got to the training room she was already there, stretching, which for her meant doing splits over two benches and giving him a brilliant view of her ass. He tore his eyes away from her and shook himself.

Even though he checked Natasha out all the time, it felt different somehow. Knowing she was a virgin made looking at her feel wrong. It made him think about how young she really was compared to him, how… innocent. Not really, of course, intellectually he knew that ‘innocent’ was practically an antonym to Natasha Romanov, but that was how he felt.

“You just going to stand there and stare all day?” she asked without even glancing at him.

“Quite possibly,” he said smoothly. This was par for the course with them, and he couldn’t let on that last night’s revelation had changed his attitude toward her so dramatically. She wouldn’t like that. Instead, like he did every day, he walked over and offered an arm for her to grip while she brought her legs under her and stood up.

“I always wonder how you get out of that position when I’m not around. It seems like your only choice is falling over.”

“Yes, but extremely gracefully,” she said as she brushed herself off. She cracked a smile at him—he always noticed how much easier her smiles came when they were alone together—and then gestured at the mats. “You ready?”

“Sure.”

Fighting her was always fun. He was stronger, but she was so much faster, it made them a great match and a constant challenge. Clint tried to pay attention to the fight let his curiosity go for as long as he could stand, but eventually he had to bring it up.

“So,” he said as he landed a knee to her ribs, “I have to ask…” She tried a take-down sweep, but it was one of her standard moves and he (usually) didn’t fall for it anymore. “You’re a virgin?” She ducked under his next punch and struck him in the stomach with her elbow, harder than she might have normally.

“Shut up,” she said, avoiding another strike and skipping out of range for a minute. “The whole idea of virginity is just a construct of a puritanical society obsessed with slut-shaming.” They had taken a pause for a moment, both out of breath.

“Okay, well, that isn’t really my point. You’ve never had sex?”

“Who did you think I was having sex with?”

“I don’t know. It’s not like I keep up with you every minute. I kinda thought you had something going on with that guy from the long con in St. Petersburg?” S.H.I.E.L.D. had a man deep undercover in the Russian mafia, and Natasha had played his girlfriend for several weeks to facilitate a particularly difficult information exchange. The guy had been handsome, smart, and they were living in the same apartment; he had just assumed.

“You thought I was fucking someone on a job? Come on, Barton, you know me better than that.” At some point during this conversation they had non-verbally reached an understanding that they were done sparring, and now they had headed to the edge of the mats for towels and water.

“Well he certainly acted like he was getting something.”

She snorted. “Maybe he really thought he was; he got black-out drunk pretty much every night.” Clint laughed.

“What about Bosnia?” he asked. Now it was her turn to laugh.

“I had a knife to his throat the entire time. There was no way I was going to let that scum touch me. He was barely worth my _pretending_ to fuck him.”

They had been working a brothel suspecting of human trafficking, and she had taken one of the bosses into a private, curtained-off area and, apparently, made sex noises for fifteen minutes while threatening his life. That particular mission was very distinctly ingrained in Clint’s mind, because the sounds she had made had been incredibly erotic. Even thinking about it now he could feel his dick twitch in his pants. Better to turn back to the subject at hand.

“Well, then, someone at S.H.I.E.L.D, maybe? I don’t know; the ‘who’ isn’t really the point, Tasha. There isn’t a straight man on the planet who would kick you out of bed. Most of us would swim across an ocean of thumbtacks just for a chance.”

She gave him a strange look, and Clint realized he maybe shouldn’t have said ‘us.’ Whether he meant it or not.

“Then what is the point?”

He shrugged. “You’ve got needs, just like everyone else, right? I just can’t figure out what’s stopping you from taking care of them.” Considering he should have seen her next words coming, it was probably a bad idea to take a drink of water right at that moment.

“Don’t worry,” she said with a smile. “I take care of them just fine on my own.” And without even pausing to acknowledge his sputtering cough, she walked away, hips swaying hypnotically.


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha was annoyed.

All day long, she’d been thinking about Clint’s reaction to the revelation about her lack of sex life. She would never admit it, but he had given her second thoughts about the way she had decided to live her life.

Natasha hated second thoughts.

When she had decided on a life of celibacy, she hadn’t really been thinking of it in those terms. What it had really boiled down to in her mind was, she didn’t have the time for sex. She dealt with her own needs on a regular basis, but like everything else she did, it was quick and efficient. Even the most detached of sexual relationships would have required more time than she cared to devote. She understood that many people couldn’t live that way, but she had never felt discontent before now. In fact, the main reason she’d decided to abstain was that, from what she had seen, it was way harder to stop once you’d started.

And in addition, although it was a secret, Natasha considered her virginity a testament to her skill. People always assumed that she seduced men to get them to do what she wanted. But the truth was, she didn't need to actually have sex with them. She really was just that fucking good. And of the multiple men who had tried to force themselves upon her, the two that had survived were permanently removed from crucial pieces of anatomy. Eventually the Red Room had started giving her female handlers just to cut down on the turnover.

If she had really dug deep into her own motivations, she might also have realized that the idea of being that vulnerable scared her. A rational part of her knew it was paranoid, but she had learned not to take anything for granted. Particularly when it came to the assumption that any given acquaintance didn’t want her dead. It was a habit that had kept her alive in Russia, kept her reasonably scar-free on missions, but it wasn’t great for personal relationships. She might interact with the other Avengers and agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, even be friendly to some of them, but that didn’t mean she was going to afford any of them an opportunity to kill her. There was only one person she trusted enough to do that.

But more importantly, abstinence simplified her life. And more than anything, Natasha craved simplicity, because her work took place in such a grey area. Everything was half-truths and distrust and moral ambiguity. But on this subject, she could say to herself, I don’t have sex. Period. Totally black and white. It was a certainty in her otherwise very uncertain life, and she hadn’t questioned it in ages.

But now, thanks to Clint, she was thinking about it again. She was wondering if maybe she’d made the decision too young, before she’d understood what sex could be. Early in her life it had seemed like sex was only useful for two things: fulfilling a biological imperative, and manipulating people. When she found she didn’t need actual intercourse to do either of those things, she had decided she could live without it. At that time, she’d never seen two people in a healthy sexual relationship. She had never met anyone she trusted enough to be unarmed around, much less open herself up to.  She had never met a man she thought could please her better than she could please herself.

None of those things were true anymore.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized that this was an experience she wanted to have. And there was only one person on earth she was willing to have it with. She wanted Clint.

Let it never be said that Natasha Romanoff doesn’t take what she wants.

~*~

Clint had been hot and bothered all day.

It had started with Natasha’s comment about… _taking care_ of herself. He’d gotten turned on, and then hadn’t had time to do anything about it, their day having been filled with strategy meetings and de-briefings from the fight they’d had the day before. And then, to top it all off, Natasha had been giving him the strangest looks over dinner. Hungry looks. The kind he would recognize on the face of any other woman, but on her they just perplexed him.

When he finally managed to get into his shower, the first thing he did was jerk off, thinking about Natasha.

Which is why, when he walked out of his bathroom and saw her on his bed, he was sure he was hallucinating.

“Tasha?”

“Hey,” she said softly. She was still wearing slacks and a blouse from their business day, sitting on the edge of his bed and staring at the floor.

“Whatcha doing?” Something was off, he could tell that much. He walked over and sat down next to her.

“Well,” she started, then hesitated. “I came in here planning to seduce you.” Clint’s eyebrows shot up. “I took all my clothes off and everything. But then you took longer than I was expecting, “ she chuckled and pushed a hand through her hair, “and I got nervous. Can you believe that?”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“I can’t. After all the things I’ve said and done to men, all the things I’ve seen, I thought I was beyond embarrassment. But apparently not.” There was a long pause. “And I was just going to leave, but…” Her eyes met his. “I still want you, Clint.”

“I want you, too, Nat. Always have.”

She smiled. “I know. I was going to use that. Use you. Just a quick fuck and we’d be done. I’d know what it was like and we could go back to being partners. Friends.”

He wasn’t hurt. He’d always thought that if they ever did have sex, that’s what it would be. Now it seemed like her thoughts were traveling in a direction he’d never dared hope for.

“But then I was thinking, if all I wanted was a release, I could do that myself. I’m trying for a new experience here.”

“So what do you want?” he asked, and felt like he had never anticipated anything more than her answer.

“I want something slow. I want to let go of control for a change. I want… to kiss you.”

Clint could barely breathe. He had never imagined he’d ever get this from her. This much emotion, this much trust. He locked eyes with her and took one of her hands in his, bringing it up to his mouth. He pressed a kiss to the back, then flipped it over and brushed his lips against her wrist. He watched her expression darken as he trailed the tip of his tongue over the delicate veins.

She wanted slow? He could do slow. Slow and torturous.

He used her wrist to tug her to him until she landed against his chest. He laid the hand he was holding on the back of his own neck, then ghosted his fingers down her arm on the way to her waist. He suppressed a groan when her fingers tangled in the hair at the nape of his neck.

He cupped her cheek and ran his thumb over her bottom lip. She tried to pull him down to kiss her, but instead he turned her head to the side, pressing his lips to the skin right below her ear. She let out a breath of frustration.

Clint and Natasha were alike in many ways, but one way in which they were fundamentally different was patience. He was a sniper, waiting was 99% of the job. And as she made another impatient noise, he smiled against her skin. This was going to be fun.

After a series of slow teasing kisses along her jaw, he finally made it to her mouth. They both took a breath and made eye contact as they contemplated the magnitude of what was about to happen between them, because no matter how hard either of them tried to be emotionless around other people, there was no lying about this. This would not be meaningless. What Natasha was choosing to give him could not be more meaningful. Her virginity might have been inconsequential, it was hard to say, but her trust? That was invaluable.

He kissed her, and he tried to put all his gratitude, his affection, his desire into the action. A series of soft, brushing kisses, then finally a real, solid one, hard and wet, and he felt her breath catch. Her hand slid up his chest and gripped his shoulder, and he was suddenly glad he hadn’t put on a shirt when he got out of the shower, just a pair of sweatpants.

When she moaned and dug her nails into his shoulder, it was like the flipping of a switch, and they were done being sweet and tender, for now. Now it was all about passion: the slow, smoldering burn of pleasure. Clint’s hand found its way under her blouse, to the deliciously soft skin of her waist.

He broke the kiss, and with both hands on her waist he encouraged her to move back and lie down. He knelt over her, taking in a sight he had never thought he would see: Natasha Romanoff lying on his bed, hair tousled, lips swollen, chest heaving, and looking at him with an expression that his imagination had never done justice to.

She smiled at the hungry look in his eye, and her hands moved to unbutton her shirt, but he caught them and pushed them back into the bed, bending down to kiss her jaw.

“Clint…” she whined, and tugged at his grip a bit.

“Who’s in control here?”

She looked at him intensely, and for a second he thought she was going to react violently. But then her expression melted into a little smile. “You.”

“That’s what you wanted, and don’t forget it, because I am going to make you _beg_.”

She scoffed. “I’ll believe that when it happens.”

He didn’t respond verbally, just bent his head down and went back to teasing her neck and jawline with his mouth, nipping and sucking in turn. She moaned and squirmed against him, and he responded by pushing her wrists down harder into the bed. Asserting his dominance.

Even though she had relinquished control of the situation, Natasha still didn’t plan to lie there and do nothing while Clint lavished her skin with attention. Instead she twisted until her thigh was between his so she could press against him. They were still in the part of sex she was well familiar with, the teasing stage, and there was no way she wasn’t going to take advantage of that knowledge. Which is why she was surprised by what she felt between his legs.

“Gotta say,” she said as his tongue traced her earlobe, “I’ve gotten more reaction than this out of men I’ve tortured.”

He chuckled, and let his breath tickle her ear as he spoke, low and gravelly. “You want to know why I took longer in the shower than you expected?”

Despite obvious distractions, Natasha was sharp. She put two and two together almost immediately after those words. But the thought sent such a delicious bolt of arousal through her abdomen, she was suddenly desperate to hear it voiced aloud.

“Yes.”

“You got me all worked up this morning. I spent the whole day thinking about you—touching yourself. You do that to me all the time, you know. Get me so hard I can barely think. And so I get in the shower… and I jerk off. It’s embarrassing how fast I come sometimes, imagining you.”

Her breath was coming in quick, shallow pants. She had never been so aroused in her life. “What do you imagine?” she asked, and there was just the tiniest hint of pleading in her voice.

His mouth was still next to her ear, so she could attribute the shudder that went through her to a ticklish sensation when he whispered, "Everything." The word was loaded with sinful promises.

Suddenly the weight of his body on hers was gone. He sat back on his heels, towering over her, and his hands moved to undo the buttons of her blouse.

She sat up to help him take of her shirt and bra. She pushed her bare chest against his, hoping to goad him into moving more quickly, but his pace remained painfully languorous. He laid back down on top of her and buried his face in the crook of her neck, then began laying kisses down her sternum. When his mouth found her breast, Natasha shivered. They were moving into unfamiliar territory; while she had done this a few times before, one more step and it would be the farthest she had ever gone. She was surprised by how nervous she felt.

Clint seemed to sense her apprehension, he lifted his head just a little bit so he could watch her face as his tongue flicked over her nipple. She met his eyes, trying to project confidence, and to her eternal embarrassment, failing. He held her gaze silently. In a relationship like theirs, anything and everything could be said with a look, and he was telling her that she was beautiful, that he wanted her, that she could open up to him, that he would never hurt her.

When the crease in her brow unknitted, he grinned and bent his head back down, laving one nipple with his tongue and rolling the other between callused fingers. She quickly forgot all her worries and lost herself in delicious sensation, her head falling back onto his pillow.

When she was moaning, he sat up again and trailed his fingers over her hip bone, right at the top of her pants. Then, in the quickest move he’d made all night, he undid the button and pulled her slacks off, taking her underwear with them, so she was suddenly completely bare to him.

Natasha realized with a shock that she had never seen a look like the one on his face as he took in her naked form. She had seen lust in the eyes of so many men, including Clint, but none of them had ever looked at her as though she were something precious. He slowly, reverently, touched one of her calves, then lifted it to his shoulder, spreading her legs to look at her fully.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, then turned his head to press an open mouthed kiss to her ankle. He traveled up her leg, sucking and kissing and torturing, and when he finally reached the top of her thigh, he swiped his fingers along her slit.

“So wet,” he said, rubbing his fingers against her clit. She moaned and thrashed.

“Clint… your mouth…”

His mouth was pressed against her bikini line, and her words caused a deep chuckle that vibrated very sensitive areas. She moaned again.

“Remember what I said, Tasha?”

She knew that he was referring to his earlier comment about begging. But despite how bad she wanted it, she wasn’t about to do that. The Black Widow didn’t beg. Not ever.

Instead, she gripped his head between her thighs, a position many a lucky man has died in. “Clint Barton,” she growled, “if you do not put your tongue inside me right this fucking second, I am going to snap your fucking neck.”

Clint laughed again, but he knew her limits and knew that she was only sort of joking. So instead of drawing out the torture further and risking bodily harm, he relented and gave her a slow, savoring lick. She gasped, and he dove in, suckling her clit until her hand reached down and gripped his hair, pulling him closer to her. But he was only willing to give her a moment of relief before going back to the teasing, tantalizing pace he had kept all night.

He pushed a finger into her smoothly, and was nearly overcome with arousal when he realized how tight she was. He focused on tracing patterns over her clit with his tongue, trying not to lose it imagining what it was going to feel like to be inside her. She made an ‘ah!’ noise when he slowly put in another finger, stretching her gently. When she was ready, he began pumping, rubbing the callused tips of his bowstring fingers against her inside wall.

When Natasha was writhing against his mouth, when he could feel her beginning to clench around his fingers, Clint took his life in his hands and lifted his head away from her. She made a wordless noise of frustration and looked down at him.

“Goddamnit, Barton,” she hissed, yanking his hair and trying to push his head back where she wanted it. He kept pumping slowly, keeping her on the edge.

“Tell me what you want, Tasha.”

She bit her lip, her head tilted back, her hips squirming. She had no energy for threats, it was all focused on holding in the pleas that were on the tip of her tongue. She couldn’t remember ever being this desperate to climax. Finally, he twisted his fingers inside her, making her gasp, and opening her mouth was like breaking the seal on her need.

“Please, Clint. God, please, make me come. I need to come in your mouth.”

Satisfied, he didn’t prolong her pain for another second. He latched onto her clit, sucking and tonguing it as his fingers applied the perfect amount of pressure to her walls, and within seconds she was flying apart, riding out the most powerful orgasm of her life.

When she had finally stopped moving, he gave her one more long lick, savoring her taste, before pulling himself up to lay beside her, one hand stroking her ribs gently. She turned her head to look at him, still panting, and let out a breathy, “Fuck.”

Clint tried not to look as smug as he felt, instead leaning down for a kiss, letting Natasha taste herself on him. The kiss was languid; he intended to give her a few minutes to recuperate, so he was shocked when almost immediately her hand slipped into his sweatpants and trailed delicately along his erection, eliciting a hiss from him. Then her hands were pushing his pants down insistently.

“I want to see you,” she said breathlessly to his wordless question. He rolled off her and quickly divested himself of his clothing, and then he was back over her, upright so she could take him in. Her eyes trailed down his naked form appreciatively, and he felt a glow of warmth knowing that it was _him_ that turned her on, his body that she wanted, that he wasn’t just a convenient way to get the experience.

He leaned down to kiss her again, this time more passionately. He leaned to one side, reaching for the drawer in his nightstand. She grabbed his arm and broke the kiss to say, “I have an IUD.”

He pulled back and gave her a confused look. She rolled her eyes. “They give them to all female S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. I didn’t want to make my sex life—or lack thereof—public knowledge, so I didn’t argue.” He flashed an amused expression, but she pulled him down into another kiss before he could make any kind of quip.

He bent his mouth down to suck on her neck again and reached down to slide his fingers back inside her. His cock rubbed against her hip and she gripped it firmly, whispering “Want you,” in his ear.

“Yeah?” he asked, breathless with anticipation. “You want me inside you? Want me to stretch you open? Fill you up?” She arched, her ‘yes’ swept up in a moan.

He slipped an arm underneath her, causing a surprised squeak when he suddenly rolled them over so she was straddling him. Regaining her bearings shockingly quickly, she pushed herself up so she could look down on him and ground against his pelvis, making him moan.

“I thought you were supposed to be in charge?” she said, smirking.

“Oh, I still am, believe me.” He gripped her hips tightly and shifted her until she was directly over him. “But it’s better if you do this part. I don’t want to hurt you.” He put his hand over hers on his cock and helped her position it at her entrance. Then his head fell back on the pillow, and he watched the way her face contorted as she lowered herself slowly onto him. He had never seen anything more beautiful.

She tilted her head back, savoring a fullness she had never felt before in all her life. When her pubic bone finally made contact with his, Natasha leaned forward and took in the sight of Clint underneath her, her hands splayed over his chest, the muscles of his arms tense as he gripped her waist, and she realized she was never going to be able to look at him again without thinking about this. She wriggled her hips a bit, eliciting a gasp from both of them.

Then their eyes met, and he said, “Ready?”

She nodded, and with his hands guiding her, she lifted up and settled back onto him. She shuddered: no sex toy she had ever used had done justice to the feeling of skin on skin, the hot pulse of him inside her. After a few more slow undulations, he shifted again, wrapping one arm around her waist and the other around her shoulders so he could roll them over again, settling over her so he could thrust.

He lowered his mouth to her ear, whispered to her in a voice that dripped lust.

“So good, Tasha, you feel so good. None of my fantasies ever did justice to this.” His thrusts were slow, but hard, allowing her to take in all the new sensations. He shifted the angle of her hips to hit the perfect spot, and she cried out. “Yeah?” he asked, his voice getting rougher. “Are you going to come? I want you to come, Nat; for the past six years all I’ve wanted was to feel you come on my cock. Are you going to come for me?”

His words, the sensations, it was all too much, and Natasha found herself climaxing again, screwing her eyes shut and letting out a cry of pleasure. When she came back down, he was still hard inside her, still moving.

When she opened her eyes, his face was inches from hers, and she was suddenly aware of what he had just seen, and the way he was looking at her now. She shut her eyes again.

“Look at me, Natasha,” he said softly. She opened her eyes and met his, but after a minute turned her head away. She didn’t want to see what was in Clint’s face, wasn’t ready for the exquisite, mad, disastrous thing he was trying to show her.

He understood. “Okay,” he whispered, almost to himself.

Her legs were wrapped around his waist, and he put his hand on one of her calves, pushing it forward until her thigh was flush against her own stomach. She looked at him again, just in time for a rough thrust to make the terrifying expression on his face contort into one she was far more comfortable with. He picked up the pace, turned the focus back from soul to body. Then her leg was on his shoulder and his fingers had found her clit, and before she was aware of what was going on, the angle change coupled with the stimulation of his fingers had her orgasming again, right on the heels of her last one. She couldn’t help it—she screamed. There was fire lighting every cell of her body, her muscles clenching around him.

Suddenly he dropped her leg to the crook of his elbow and pitched forward, burying his face in her shoulder and biting down as he came, hot and forceful, inside of her. His body stuttered, then sagged against her. She removed her nails from where they were digging into his shoulders, slid her palms down his arms. Part of her wanted to embrace him, but the look in his eyes as he had watched her fall apart underneath him stopped her. She wasn’t prepared for that.

He rolled off her, lying on his back quiet and still. It was the same kind of stillness he took on when he was waiting for a sparring opponent to make a move. Sure enough, at the first tensing of muscles in her body, the first sign that she was ready to move again, he wrapped a hand around her wrist.

“I know you want to leave,” he said quietly. He was right; she was getting ready to run. Sex was one thing, lying in a man’s arms after you had seen his feelings for you was an entirely different matter. “I’m asking you, Natasha, please stay.”

She rolled onto her side to face him, supporting herself on an elbow.

“Why?”

There were words, words she knew he was thinking, words that if they were spoken aloud would mean that this would be over. Not just the sex, those words would mean their partnership would be finished.

So he spoke different ones.

“Because there’s nothing to be afraid of.” She looked into his eyes and understood what he meant. Any trace of what she had seen earlier was gone. His expression was kind, tender even, but nothing even coming close to the way he had looked at her before. Those feelings were locked away, and now he was just Clint. Just the same as he had always been. She was swept with relief.

Natasha knew she hadn’t imagined his earlier expression, hadn’t misread him. She knew that terrifying truth was still in him somewhere, but he was showing her that it didn’t have to change things. That he could keep his emotions in check.

Most of her fear left her, and she settled back down into his mattress. She had to sleep somewhere, she rationalized, might as well be here. She turned away from him onto her side, trying to separate them a bit, but when his arm snaked around her middle and pulled her to him, she couldn’t bring herself to protest. 


End file.
